Not that I want to get into an argument about a subculture I don't know much about, but a journey of years and questioning assumptions don't seem inconsistent with some of the otakin stories I was reading last night. And digging new pits in the geek hierarchy hardly seems like the easy way out. Some of them seem to be independent re-inventions, too, along the lines of "oh, there are others like me" rather than "ooh, cool idea, I'll be an otakukin too!"

Basically they, talking about themselves, sounded like any other spiritual seeker, (in my admittedly limited experience) but talking about being Inuyasha instead of having God in their heart. And my reaction is that the crazy starts the minute you walk past public empiricism into private empiricism (unshareable experience) or worse, pure faith. In those areas all you can judge by is logical consistency and effect on their lives and behavior, and they seem to come out pretty well there.

Plus I don't see why spiritual journeys have to be long and difficult. What's wrong with having instant revelations? I don't fetishize difficulty, only testability, and that's been left way behind.

Having read Sandman and played Changeling is probably a big prep for me; a notion of a Dreaming eases the whole "fictional characters are real" thing.